Inspections: Who’s checking your food?

Who’s making sure your food is safe? It depends on whether it’s grown domestically or imported, whether it’s a fruit or a vegetable, whether it’s meat, poultry, fish, dairy foods or eggs, and whether you buy the food in a restaurant, a grocery store or a farmers’ market. A complicated web of state and federal agencies, private inspection companies and foreign governments make up the food inspection system at work for the U.S. consumer.

Who checks food imported into our country?

The responsibility of assuring that food imported into the United States is safe generally falls on two federal agencies. The U.S. Department of Agriculture inspects imported meat, poultry and some egg products, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration handles the rest. The USDA allows the import of meat products only from countries that offer food inspection systems with standards similar to its own.

“Before we allow fresh products to come into the country we establish rules … and we agree to what those rules are,” said Ron Gaskill, a trade specialist with the American Farm Bureau Federation.

“In some instances we rely on their agencies, if we are confident with that. If not, we establish our own facility to inspect, a precursor that the USDA has used very effectively.”

In the case of fruits and vegetables, the FDA checks shipments as they enter the country. It’s a system that has worked well for catching produce with excessive pesticide residues or pest infestations. But an ERS analysis notes that it’s much tougher to detect bacterial contamination, which has led to food-borne illness outbreaks in recent years.

“So far we haven’t found any major problems with any of our larger trading partners in meeting our standards,” Gaskill said. “We have had food-borne illness outbreaks in the past traced back to imports from Mexico and China, but there isn’t an overall real concern.”

Who checks food produced in Virginia?

Dairy foods and eggs processed in the Old Dominion are inspected by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ Dairy and Foods Division. Fruits and vegetables are inspected by wholesale or retail buyers, and growers must comply with state pesticide and fungicide application regulations. VDACS also inspects retail food stores, convenience stores and other places that sell food, to assure it’s stored properly and meets all freshness regulations.

Any meat slaughtered and processed in Virginia is inspected by the VDACS Office of Meat and Poultry Services, which is certified by USDA. Fish products must be inspected by the FDA since the state does not offer that service.

What about restaurants and farmers' markets?

Local health departments conduct inspections of restaurants and other retail business kitchens, under the supervision of the Virginia Department of Health.

And farmers’ markets? There traditionally has not been as much formal oversight of farmers’ markets and food sold by individuals from the tailgates of pickup trucks unless the product sold already is regulated for sale in retail stores.

VDACS does inspect the official scales used in farmers’ markets. And a USDA organic certification sticker on produce indicates the product was raised according to federal organic food standards.